The Second Objective (33 page)

For the first time that morning headlines about the “Battle of the Bulge” appeared in American newspapers, and it quickly became the catchphrase for the entire Ardennes offensive. As the American front continued to deteriorate, Eisenhower made a controversial decision to place Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery in charge of the northern half of the battlefield. In doing so, he transferred authority over two American army groups that had long served under General Bradley to the one British officer almost universally disliked by the American senior staff. Unable to communicate with his generals in that part of the field, Bradley had his hands full holding the southern half of the Ardennes until Patton arrived. Still, Bradley reacted furiously to the perceived slap at his performance and tried to tender his resignation. Eisenhower refused it, arguing that the Germans had surrounded the American divisions in Bastogne. The fight was entering its most critical hours, and Bradley was his man.

Bradley had until recently, and for years prior, been Eisenhower’s superior officer, so this loss of command was a bitter pill to swallow, particularly since he knew Ike shared his antipathy for Montgomery. When Bradley agreed to stay on, as a show of gratitude Eisenhower made arrangements for him to receive his fourth star. Although Montgomery conducted his new command effectively, conflicts that resulted between the senior staffs of the Allies nearly achieved Hitler’s objective of tearing their delicate alliance apart. Throughout, Eisenhower maintained his unearthly composure, kept Montgomery in check, and held these two armies together by force of will and his own quiet decency.

Three hours before daylight on December 21, the 150th Panzer Brigade finally entered the Battle of the Bulge under the command of Otto Skorzeny. Realizing that Operation
Greif
’s plan to capture the bridges at the Meuse would never materialize, Skorzeny volunteered his brigade for a frontal assault to capture the key city of Malmédy, where the Allies had mounted a makeshift but tenacious defense. His ten tanks, German Panthers disguised as American Shermans, led the attack from the southwest. They did not enjoy the benefit of surprise; an attack in the Ardennes by a German force dressed as Americans had been anticipated for days. As the tanks approached, they set off trip wires that flooded the night sky with flares. Under the artificial light, American guns entrenched on the far side of a stream opened fire and destroyed four of the tanks. Two more were taken out as they forded the stream. By dawn and into the early afternoon, rallied by Skorzeny’s leadership, the brigade fought its way into the outskirts of town, defended primarily by the 291st Combat Engineers. When two companies of American infantry arrived to reinforce them, Skorzeny assessed his precarious position from a hill overlooking the field and reluctantly ordered his brigade to retreat. None of his tanks and less than half of his infantry survived.

That night, while approaching German divisional headquarters near Ligneuville to make his report, Skorzeny’s armored car was blown into a ditch by a barrage of American artillery shells. Skorzeny was thrown from the car. Shell fragments peppered him in the legs, and a splinter the size of a small pencil pierced his forehead above the right eye. It caused heavy bleeding and carved off a flap of dangling flesh that impaired his vision. Taken to headquarters for treatment, he refused anesthetics and the doctor’s recommendation that he be moved to a hospital for surgery, demanding that they stitch his forehead together so he could return to the field. He would command his remaining troops in a variety of actions for two more days before infection set in around the wound that nearly blinded him and forced his evacuation to a German hospital.

The Ardennes offensive, so far as Otto Skorzeny and what was left of his 150th Panzer Brigade were concerned, was effectively over.

30

Paris, France

DECEMBER 20

T
he City of Light had turned dark and cold. While the Allies’ Liberation of Paris in August raised the spirits of those who had endured the German occupation, the early success of the Ardennes offensive leveled them in a single chilling blow. Amid wild rumors that circulated in the absence of hard news, the specter of Nazi columns marching back in along the Champs Élysées seemed all too easy to envision. Thousands of returning civilians who had just begun to reestablish their lives fled again in panic.

For those who remained, on the eve of what would be remembered as the coldest Parisian winter in modern memory, there was little fuel to heat their apartments and almost no food beyond the barest necessities to put on their table. Unstable gas lines resulted in random explosions that killed dozens every week. Curfews and blackouts, already in place but enforced more rigorously once fighting in the Ardennes began, emptied the streets. The power grid failed at least twice a night and the deep darkness provided cover for a campaign of terror, as the Free French who had resisted the Nazis during occupation took revenge against collaborators. Only two months in office, General Charles de Gaulle’s provisional French government clashed repeatedly with the Allied high command, which retained de facto control of Paris as a war zone, and their conflicts strangled the flow of essential goods and services. Anyone with means who sought to remedy their personal or house hold shortages had no alternative but to traffic in black-market goods.

Every block on every street in every
arrondissement
produced a broker, someone who knew someone who could connect him to the rising tide of illicit goods that flooded the city like an invisible sea. Enterprising citizens traveled back and forth by train to Normandy, returning with suitcases full of Spanish hams, wheels of English cheese, sacks of coffee from Morocco. Whether you were a GI looking to sell his daily ration of cigarettes to a man hawking Lucky Strikes outside the St. Denis Metro station, or a star chef trying to score a hundred pounds of veal for a three-star restaurant on the Rue Royale, the deal could be done if you greased the right wheels. In the Darwinian ecosystem that had sprouted up overnight to meet those demands, ruthlessness and amorality guaranteed success.

Montmartre, Paris

DECEMBER 20

As regular as banker’s hours, the man known only as Ververt spent every night from eight
P.M.
to two
A.M.
at a table near the kitchen of a jazz club he owned on Rue Clichy at the foot of Montmartre. He chain-smoked cigarettes, nursed one milky glass of pastis each hour, and kept an eye trained to oversee the action on the floor. A squadron of underlings ran interference, screening every supplicant who asked for an audience with their boss. Most problems or requests they were able to handle, but occasionally something crossed the door that warranted Ververt’s personal attention. Like the two thousand in American cash sitting on the table in front of him.

Ververt gestured to a couple of chairs. The two men looked and moved like Americans. Soldiers, out of uniform, probably deserters, like so many others who sought him out. Listening to “
le jazz Américain
” from the quartet on stage, the audience was filled with the usual assortment of Allied servicemen, more than 50 percent on any given night. None had any idea they were paying for stolen U.S. Army liquor and cigarettes they should have been getting for pennies on the dollar at their officers’ club or PX.

“Is it always this cold in Paris this time of year? I’m gonna complain to my travel agent,” said the shorter one, rubbing his hands together. Then, to an appearing waiter: “How about a cup of coffee?”

Ververt could see that the taller man, who hadn’t spoken, was in charge but wanted to let the little one do the talking. The second man shook his head to the waiter. His eyes met Ververt’s for a moment, before respectfully looking away.

This one is interesting,
thought Ververt.

“You speak English, right?” asked Eddie Bennings.

“I speak dollars,” said Ververt.

“It’s the universal language,” said Eddie. “We’re working from the same phrase book, my friend.”

Ververt looked at the two thousand, without making a move to pick it up. “What are you trying to say?”

The man leaned toward him, in the overly familiar way that Americans mistook for charm. “I believe that you had some dealings with a few of my former associates. Captain John Stringer and other officers from the 724th Railway Battalion.”

Ververt stared at him without responding until Eddie felt compelled to take a sudden interest in a book of matches.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” said Ververt, pausing to light his next cigarette from the butt of his last. “Even if I did, and it happened that he had recently been arrested along with every other man in your battalion, why would I tell you about it?”

“Because you needed him,” said Eddie. “It’s left a hole in your supply chain. I worked closely with Captain Stringer, I kept his books, so I know how much business you did together. We never met, but that’s how I know about you.”

Ververt looked back and forth between the two men, as Eddie’s coffee arrived.

“I misjudged you,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“I thought you were military police. I am so relieved to learn you’re not working undercover,” he said, then turned to Von Leinsdorf. “Such a disadvantage in my business. I take everyone at their word.”

Eddie seemed bewildered by the man’s deadpan cynicism, and looked to his companion.

“What is your name?” Ververt asked the other man.

Von Leinsdorf didn’t seem to hear the question, looking toward the stage. “What’s with the jungle music?”

“They’ve played this way in Montmartre for twenty years.
Le tumulte noir
; the tourists come for it. It’s as much a part of Paris as our contempt for them.”

“I thought the Germans put a stop to it.”

“When the Nazis took over, they decided it is degenerate music. A Negro-Jewish conspiracy to undermine the morals of the French, as if they had any, but a more particular threat to the morals of the Germans. Theirs, as you know, are more established as a matter of public record.”

“That’s rich,” said Eddie.

Ververt glanced at him again, then turned back to Von Leinsdorf. “My personal theory is that it reminds the
Boches
of the Jazz Age, Paris in the twenties, and the shame they suffered at Versailles. That’s what it’s about for them, this Nazi business. We’re all paying for rubbing their noses in the shit. So American jazz was banned during the Occupation. The last four years we play only ‘French jazz.’”

“The Liberation change that?”

“Now the locals can’t get enough. And the soldiers, the Americans, they like it, too. And they like our women,” said Ververt, looking out at the audience. “Especially the blacks.”

“So why call it American jazz?” asked Eddie. “Sounds the same to me.”

“These days if I called horse shit ‘American’ I could sell horse shit sandwiches. Paris will tire of you soon enough, you’ll see. Liberators quickly turn into occupiers.”

“You get any British in here?” asked Von Leinsdorf.

“Everyone comes to Montmartre. We create a fantasy here; that sin can be packaged, contained, sold like chewing gum. It appeals to a fundamental part of human nature, whether it’s Nazi, American, British, bourgeois, resistance, collaborator.”

“I don’t see any Brits.”

“They’re not allowed to wear their uniforms,” said Ververt. “Some concern that they mustn’t be seen in any
boîte de nuit
that traffics in this alleged black market.”

“That’s the English for you. Always erring on the side of propriety,” said Von Leinsdorf. “They don’t approve of premarital sex because it might lead to dancing.”

Ververt snorted, his approximation of a laugh.

“Don’t they have their own officers’ club?” asked Von Leinsdorf casually.

“They’ve taken over Maxim’s,” said Ververt. “Do you know it? The Rue Royale?”

“Who’s been to Paris and doesn’t know Maxim’s?” said Von Leinsdorf, with a Gallic shrug.

“It’s not the same. The gendarmes arrested the maître d’ recently, Albert, a very well-known, a very well-liked local personality.”

“For what reason?”

“For extending the same courtesies to the Nazis that he has shown the
haute monde
for twenty-five years. This was not collaboration, it was hospitality. An essential part of his business.”

“I’ll bet those same gendarmes who arrested Albert,” said Von Leinsdorf, “have been collaborating with the Nazis in Maxim’s for the last three years. And the only reason was to prevent Albert from testifying against them in the reprisals.”

“You see?
Exactement!
The perils of Liberation.”

“That’s what you can count on in times like these,” said Von Leinsdorf. “
Égalité, liberté, hypocrisie.
”

Ververt picked up the two thousand from the table. “Money has no politics. It will outlast ideology.”

“Ah yes, but will we, my friend?”

Ververt snorted in appreciation and pocketed the cash. “Come back tomorrow night. Seven o’clock, before we open.”

Von Leinsdorf stood up to leave and Eddie followed suit. He knew that Von Leinsdorf had forged a bond with the man, and that he’d gotten what they came for, but he wasn’t clear about how or when it had happened.